Meeting (Bonus Chapter for 100 Investments, Seeking Votes)

The footprints at the entrance had faded, covered by a layer of dust.

At least two hours had passed.

There was soft music playing inside the room. He poked his head in, carefully surveying the area—a harp was playing by itself on the floor, accompanied by the snoring of a three-headed dog curled up beside it.

Beneath the beast, the trapdoor had been opened, revealing a path leading underground.

Aside from the two of them, there were no other magical signatures.

He drew his sword and stepped inside.

Reaching the trapdoor, he didn't jump down immediately but leaned over to look. Even in the darkness, his vision remained unobstructed—vines and creepers with deep blue, tentacle-like roots. It was Devil's Snare.

Below the Devil's Snare, there were no other plants.

Was this simply... for cushioning?

He jumped down with confidence, and the Devil's Snare immediately coiled around him.

With a flick of his hand, he cast the Igni Sign, sending sparks flying—the vines recoiled instantly, dropping Harry onto the ground less than a meter below.

Moving further ahead, he encountered dense, tiny magical signatures; they were buzzing through the air, fluttering their wings.

Harry could see clearly that they were keys. Beside the locked door leading to the next room lay a broomstick. How to pass this trial was self-evident.

He was quite skilled at flying.

But he had no heart for playing flying games at the moment.

He walked to the door and waved his wand: "Alohomora!"

There was no reaction; a counter-curse had been placed upon it.

"Gate of Opening!" Harry chanted another spell.

With a bang, the lock exploded, and thick black smoke billowed out. Harry reached out and pulled, but the door remained unmoved.

The counter-curses were truly comprehensive.

Harry clicked his tongue and pressed his hand against the door—"Aard!"

The impact of the Sign caused cracks to spiderweb across the wood. Harry followed up with a kick, sending splinters flying—was this not much faster than riding a broomstick?

The third room was extraordinarily magnificent.

A giant chessboard stood before him, with pieces nearly as tall as he was.

Harry felt a headache coming on. Card games... he was quite good at those, but chess was a bit of a stretch. He walked around the board to the door and pulled, but it wouldn't open either.

He intended to use the same method as before, but the moment he cast the Aard Sign—

Violating the rules of the room, the magic within surged violently.

Crack, crack—

The chess pieces came to life. They swayed, brandishing the swords or spears in their hands, and lunged toward Harry.

It seemed a fight was in order!

Harry raised his hand, cast a Quen shield upon himself, then dodged and rolled to another spot. He swung his silver sword, slicing the head off a bishop in one stroke.

These were merely rigid, transfigured constructs.

A bit troublesome, but nothing major.

In less than ten minutes, the floor was littered with broken chess pieces.

Harry didn't have a single scratch on him, and he hadn't even broken much of a sweat.

In the room, the magic continued to surge, and the fragments of the chess pieces began to squirm and gather together. They possessed a self-repair mechanism; in half an hour at most, they would return to the state Harry had first seen.

He blasted the door open and entered the next room.

A foul stench hit him instantly. In the center of the room lay the corpse of a Troll. Harry leaned in to inspect it; the body was still warm, dead for less than an hour.

There were no wounds.

Traces of the Killing Curse...

He cut off a piece of the Troll's beard and, amidst the grumbling of the Sorting Hat, stuffed it inside the hat before rushing off to the next room without a moment's delay.

On a table sat seven bottles of potion in various shapes.

A powerful magic lingered around the room. The moment he fully stepped inside, it was triggered, and the surrounding walls and the two doors were engulfed in black flames.

It was not Fiendfyre.

It lacked that thick, cursed aura, but it was scorching. The contained heat was astonishingly high; it wasn't something one could simply charge through with a shield.

Harry walked to the table. Besides the potions, there was a piece of parchment with a logic puzzle written in scrawled handwriting—clearly the handiwork of Snape.

He loved using methods that fools couldn't solve and that even clever people had to struggle with, only to watch others in a state of distress while he coldly mocked them with a "Troll-like brain."

Witchers most often used Signs and swords to solve problems.

That didn't mean they lacked brains; it was just more convenient that way—sometimes, having a brain oneself didn't mean others necessarily had one too.

Soon, he selected the correct potion, drank it, and passed through the flames into the next room—the final room.

The furnishings here were even simpler.

It was empty, save for a magnificent full-length mirror, and his target was standing right in front of it, gazing at it greedily, a blissful red glow suffusing his face.

He was intoxicated by the dreamscape of his own imagination.

"Fool! Someone has entered!" A hoarse voice rang out, scolding with a hint of anxiety.

Quirrell whipped his head around, but saw nothing.

"The Invisibility Cloak, it's Potter!" The hoarse voice shrieked again.

Quirrell waved his wand: "Windblast!"

Harry took the initiative to pull off the cloak and stuff it back into his hat.

Quirrell drew out his tone: "Potter, I thought it would be someone else, like Snape; he is always getting in my way."

"We meet again." Harry nodded at him. "Looks like you've recovered well. Is your kidney better?"

Quirrell's face turned ugly at once: "Sharp-tongued as ever. I always seem to see you in places where you shouldn't be. Is this the contingency Dumbledore left behind? You?"

"A first-year student? You look down on me too much..."

"Perhaps I didn't even need to come." Harry shrugged. "It seems you haven't found the Sorcerer's Stone yet? A long time has already passed."

"Potter!" Quirrell raised his wand with a trembling hand. "Perhaps the lesson you learned that night wasn't enough?"

Harry sneered: "What right does someone who had his kidney stabbed by me have to say such things?"

Just as he was about to cast a spell, the hoarse voice spoke up: "Let me see him."

Quirrell's face filled with terror: "No, Master, you haven't recovered yet..."

"Do it." The hoarse voice sounded again. "I am not so weak as that."

Quirrell raised a trembling hand and unwound the turban he had kept wrapped around his head—the one that had grown quite foul-smelling. As the turban fell to the ground, he turned his back.

A bald head—the only hairless one among all the wizards Harry had ever seen.

On the back of the head grew a face, lacking a nose, with only two narrow slits for nostrils and a pair of snake-like eyes: "Potter, we finally meet."

"Voldemort?" Harry gripped his sword and added another layer of Quen shield to himself. "You look truly hideous."

"I finally understand why you could sense my movements. So... you have been staying in this place all along."

"Why are you so nervous?" Voldemort hissed with a laugh. "You are the Savior, the one who defeated me, the Savior of the supreme and great Dark Lord."

He paused at this: "Leaving me with nothing but shadows and vapor, forced to share a body with my servant!"

Harry added, his tone dripping with sarcasm: "And having to stay in a stinking turban all day. No wonder you have no nose."

Quirrell's body shuddered. Voldemort's face, though nearly featureless, twisted hideously: "Potter, we can talk."

"I can see that you have ambition, even if you did go to Gryffindor—look at how beautiful your eyes are. My Nagini has a pair of eyes just like them."

"That is my most precious pet snake."

"We can cooperate, share the Sorcerer's Stone. That stone possesses marvelous magic and can even resurrect the dead. Don't you want to resurrect your parents?"

His words were full of temptation.

"Some say my eyes look like a cat's, others say they look like a lion's." Harry responded to him coldly. "Do you know what the common point between cats and lions is?"

Voldemort didn't speak, narrowing his eyes as he looked at him.

"They can both hunt snakes." Harry answered his own question.

Voldemort, controlling Quirrell's body, walked to the mirror: "Do you know why Dumbledore left this mirror here?"

Harry didn't speak.

Voldemort continued: "It is the Mirror of Erised. It reflects the desires of one's heart, the most essential cravings."

"Do you know what I see?"

"The Sorcerer's Stone. I have recovered my body and become that omnipotent Dark Lord once more."

"Don't you want to see what your desires are?"

Harry shook his head: "Thanks, but I have no interest."

Voldemort waved his wand, and the mirror flew in front of Harry. Even though he dodged, it still reflected him.

In the mirror, his reflection remained, winked at him, pulled a red stone that didn't belong to him—and didn't exist—out of its pocket, and put it back in.

The phantom in the mirror influenced reality.

Harry felt a weight in his pocket as something heavy dropped inside—without a doubt, that was the Sorcerer's Stone.

This made his expression sink.

Voldemort was overjoyed: "So that is how it is. Dumbledore has tricked me once again, but he miscalculated in the end. Hand over the Sorcerer's Stone!"

He waved his wand without even chanting a spell.

From beneath his robes, a mass of dark, bruised snakes crawled out, surging toward Harry.

Igni!

Harry cast the Sign, and flames surged forth, swallowing the patch of black snakes. With another flick of his wand, blue flames billowed up; they lacked lethality, but at the very least... they could obscure the line of sight.

The snakes were not the danger.

The very moment Harry moved, a snake in the direction he was running gurgled and shifted into a wall. If this path was blocked, he would take another; he shifted his center of gravity—and at the same time.

"Avada Kedavra!"

Voldemort chanted the incantation, the Killing Curse striking toward the direction Harry was most likely to retreat. There were many dark wizards capable of casting the Killing Curse, but the reason Voldemort became the Dark Lord was because... he could guarantee that every single Killing Curse would hit its mark as often as possible.

Harry plunged his sword into the ground, using it to propel himself and barely dodging the strike.

Aard Sign, slammed against the wall.

Magic power shattered, scattering in all directions.

Fortunately, this was not the Forbidden Forest, but a cramped room. Harry darted left and right, quickly closing the distance, and swung his sword, aiming to cut Quirrell in half at the waist.

Swish-swish—

Two sharp sounds.

Voldemort watched Harry, who was now within arm's reach, with an amused expression, his wand pointed at him: "Useless. I knew you would use a sword, and I had long since prepared for it."

"Goodbye, Potter."

"Ava—"

Before he could finish the incantation, Harry clenched his other fist and swung it toward Voldemort: "Is that so? Did you ever consider that I also know how to use my fists?"

Sizzle—

A harsh, explosive sound erupted from the skin on the back of the head, and like a burn, a cluster of blisters bubbled up.

Harry's scar began to throb with intense pain as well.

Asking for votes, asking for support~

Hands on hips, a little slow today, my apologies.